


i am the bones you couldn’t break

by devereauxed



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hospital, Hurt No Comfort, Mentions of Blood, Really just a lot of hurt, post-S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 04:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12148548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devereauxed/pseuds/devereauxed
Summary: When Rose is attacked in prison, Luisa has to deal with aftermath.





	i am the bones you couldn’t break

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so. Hi. 
> 
> I wanted to write a Rose and Luisa hurt/comfort fic, but I got a little sidetracked on the hurt and forgot the comfort. I'm considering a second chapter where I get to that, but we'll see if people even want that. 
> 
> Rose gets pretty hurt in this fic, so if that's not your thing then I'd back out now. The violence warning is just in case, to be honest, the violence doesn't happen in the fic itself, but it's talked about. Mostly I describe the result of the violence more than anything, but I just wanted to be safe. 
> 
> I'm feeling a little tender and vulnerable about this one, so let me know what you think pleeeease!

The loud ring of her phone startled Luisa awake and she scrambled to grab it from the nightstand beside her. She checked the screen - blocked number. It was after two in the morning; there were very few people would call this late from a blocked number and they all reported to one person.

“Hello?” she said, her heart pounding.

A gruff voice replied. “Mercy Hospital. Room 391. Now.” The line went dead. 

Luisa’s heart dropped to her stomach. _Oh god._

Her mind offered up a rapid succession of reasons why Rose would be in the hospital, each more distressing than the last, and she fought to keep her hands steady as she got dressed.

Somehow, in her mind, Rose had seemed untouchable, even in prison. Her ability to manipulate, charm, and deceive had yet to get her out from behind bars, but it had earned her a handful of guards who had greatly appreciated a new avenue of cash flow. They’d made life simpler for Rose on the inside, manipulating the system on her behalf to keep her comfortable. The arrangement had allowed Luisa greater access to Rose than she had thought possible, even giving them the opportunity for regular phone calls and, most surprisingly, the occasional visit – generally lacking the constraints of both bars and clothes. 

She knew that she was playing with fire. Being caught in contact with Rose could land her back in prison. Plus, Rose was still Rose. But it was exhausting to care. She was beyond apologizing for what she wanted, and far beyond caring if it was good for her or not. She loved Rose, and Rose – in her own twisted way – loved her. Luisa had decided that that was enough for her.    

At least Rose never viewed her as an obligation or inconvenience, which was more than she could say for some people in her life.

* * *

If pressed she wouldn’t have been able to recall the drive to the hospital, but she quickly found herself there, moving toward the closed ward on the third floor. One of the guards Rose had an understanding with looked the other way as Luisa moved past him and opened the door, clearly doing his best to pretend he didn’t notice her at all.

Inside the ward there was no rush or scurry; it was late and it was quiet. Machines beeped and nurses murmured at their station as Luisa made her way down the long hallway. A guard outside of the room she was moving toward watched her with an unreadable expression, and she paused in front of him, not daring to speak.

He hesitated for a moment, his eyes flashing with something Luisa could read only as pity. 

“It’s not pretty,” he said, the kindness in his voice setting her nerves on end. “You should be prepared.”

Luisa took a shaky breath and fought the panic welling up inside of her. 

“Is she alive?” she said, forcing the last word out. She’d been here before. Images of Rose dead on the floor before her swam to the surface of her mind and she clenched her fists tightly. 

“Yes,” he replied simply. His refusal to elaborate sent a shiver along Luisa’s spine.   

“What happened?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice steady. 

“A group of them got to her, it was fast,” he told her. It was clear that he was choosing his words carefully. 

“I thought she was supposed to be in protective isolation because of how high profile her case is,” Luisa said, her voice raising as anger surged inside of her. 

“She was,” the guard responded. “We don’t know how they did it. They had to have had…help.” 

Luisa swallowed hard. It seemed Rose wasn’t the only one who had been able to manipulate the system on the inside. She pushed the swirl of questions to the side for now - who and why would come later. 

She ran a trembling hand over her face. “What did they do to her?” 

He hesitated again, and she wished momentarily for one of the other ones, the ones who didn’t care about her or Rose, the ones who just cared about the money. 

“Just say it,” she snapped. “I’m not a child.” 

“It was a free for all. We thought it was just fists and feet, but…” he stopped and Luisa clenched her jaw, preparing herself. “But one of them had a shiv.” 

“How many times?” she asked quietly. 

“I don’t know,” he answered. “There was too much blood. They took her in to surgery as soon as we got her here.  She was having trouble breathing.”

“Collapsed lung,” she murmured and he nodded. “And now?” 

“They told us that she’s ‘serious but stable’,” he said. 

Luisa let out a slow breath. “Okay,” she said more to herself than to him. “Okay.” 

She turned toward the door and moved to step inside, but he reached out and stopped her. 

“You only have until three,” he said, his voice apologetic. “We have a shift change.” 

She swallowed hard and nodded, her heart sinking. A little less than half an hour. It wasn’t enough time. It was never going to be enough time. 

Steeling herself, she stepped through the doorway, and her stomach twisted horribly as she caught her first glimpse of the still form on the bed. She bit the inside of her cheek harshly and fought the urge to be sick. 

Rose was almost unrecognizable. 

Every fiber of her being was begging her to look away, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. 

Like a door slamming shut, she felt her medical training take over, saving her from the nearly devastating urge to collapse, and she began to methodically catalogue the injuries she could see. Rose’s face was mottled and swollen, her pale skin covered with bruises and welts, a neat line of stitches across her forehead. Her hair was matted with blood, and Luisa felt a spark of anger within her at the fact that nobody had sought to take care of that yet. Cuts and bruises were scattered along the skin of her arms, leading down into a cast encasing her left wrist, and Luisa could tell that under the sheets her abdomen was thick with bandages.

She stepped forward decisively and grabbed Rose’s chart from the bin on the wall, needing to know. 

A broken wrist. Broken nose. Two cracked ribs. A collapsed lung. 

She gasped sharply. 

They had stabbed her seven times. 

An overwhelming mix of rage and anguish washed over her and she reached out a hand to steady herself against the wall. Guilt and blame warred within her. She was furious with Rafael because he had lied to her, upset with herself for believing him and bringing Rose back here, but most of all livid with Rose for being _Rose_. She’d long ago accepted the consequences of their life together, but this was not one she’d ever let herself envision. Breathing raggedly, she berated herself. Rose had run a criminal empire, she’d lived her life as a queen of the seedy underbelly of the world, _of course_ it had come to this, but all Luisa felt was naïve and unprepared.

She felt the darkness that had been unleashed in her following her brother’s betrayal amplify, tendrils of rage and revenge lacing themselves through her ribs and settling deep within her. In her heart she knew that this was not Rafael’s fault, that ultimately Rose was a victim of her own choices, but the role he played in their current situation couldn’t be overlooked. He had eagerly taken her happy ending and shattered it, and now he had shattered Rose too. 

For better or worse, she had chosen her side. She wouldn’t pretend that Rose was faultless, but at the end of the day she knew that she was a priority to Rose. Rose cared about her sanity, her sobriety, her life. Rose loved her.   

A memory flitted through her mind. Rogelio sitting before her. _Rafael does have a family. The Villanueva family_.  
  
Back then that sentence had been devastating. Now, it fortified her. She straightened her back. 

He could keep them. Rose was her family. 

She grabbed a chair and pulled it toward to the bed, sitting close enough that she could reach out and touch her. Luisa raised a tentative hand to the bed and let her fingers drift along the skin of Rose’s arm. She was cold. Luisa snatched her hand back and swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. 

She took several deep breaths to steady herself before reaching out once again and wrapping her hand around Rose’s uninjured wrist, instinctively tightening her grip and allowing the other woman’s pulse to beat steadily against her fingertips. 

It wasn’t much, but it was something. It meant that she was still in there somewhere.

Leaving her hand against Rose’s skin, she watched over her. It was the only thing she could do. And even that was temporary. 

With every beat of Rose’s heart against her skin, Luisa physically felt her time ticking away. She couldn’t bring herself to look away from Rose’s face, trying to find her beneath what had happened to her. She found herself searching for freckles beneath the bruising, seeking a scar along a swollen lip. 

She needed to feel like Rose was there with her, because the feeling that she was in that room alone was only growing.  It gnawed at her, filling her mind with images of a world without Rose. She knew exactly what it felt like; she’d done it already. 

In the end, it was the stillness that was her undoing. 

She’d seen Rose stand frozen, cold, frighteningly impassive, but even in those moments her eyes were alight, teeming with calculation and life. Now there was nothing. Her body was there, but her soul, her spirit, whatever made her _Rose_ had disappeared. 

It was too much like the last time. Those blue eyes wide and unblinking, unseeing. That rope wrapped around her throat. Unconsciously, Luisa let her eyes wander to Rose’s neck and her blood ran cold - there were rings of bruises along the pale skin. Someone had wrapped their hands around her throat. 

Luisa buried her face in her hands, breathing deeply and fighting back tears.

Sudden panic set her heart beating rapidly and shortened her breath. She needed to see her – not this horribly stagnant shell. She needed to see her eyes. She needed to see _Rose_. 

She lurched forward and sat next to her on the bed. 

“Rose,” she began. “You need to wake up. I need you to wake up.”

Nothing. 

“Please, Rose. For me, okay? Open your eyes,” she continued.

Her eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. She only had a few minutes left.

“Rose, I’m going to have to leave. Soon. I need to see you before then. I need to know you’re there. I need to know that you’re coming back. Please?” Luisa’s voice broke on the last word and she leaned over carefully, letting her forehead rest on Rose’s shoulder. 

Rose didn’t even smell like herself anymore. Even in jail, where Rose’s hair had lacked the familiar scent of lightly floral shampoo and her pulse points were markedly free of Chanel, even then the other woman had retained something that was distinctly Rose. 

But now that was gone, lost beneath the heavy scent of blood and the chemically medicinal scents of surgery. 

Fighting back the sobs threatening to overtake her, she let herself rest gently against the woman beneath her, just close enough to feel Rose solid against her without putting any weight on her. She closed her eyes tightly and lost herself in the warmth of Rose’s body, her breath soft against Luisa’s cheek. She desperately tried to conjure an image of them from before all of this – wrapped around one another, lost together in the world.

Her attempt was cut short by a voice from the door.

“It’s time to go,” the guard said, his voice gentle but insistent. 

Luisa felt several traitorous tears leak from the corners of her eyes, running down her cheeks to Rose’s skin below. 

“Ms. Alver,” he urged. 

She shook her head as denial set in. She couldn’t leave her. She wouldn’t leave her.

“Luisa!” he barked. 

She sat up in surprise. They never called her by her first name. They knew better.

“Right now,” he told her, his face serious, leaving no room for argument.

She leaned forward and placed the gentlest of kisses to Rose’s eyelids, cheeks, and finally her lips before forcing herself to stand quickly and turn away. She kept her head high, her steps measured and controlled as they carried her away from Rose. 

But. 

“Lu…” 

She froze at the sound of the rough voice from behind her, her stomach twisting. 

“ _Now_ ,” the guard said from the doorway, slight panic in his eyes.

Luisa turned to the bed and inhaled sharply. Blue eyes were looking back at her. 

She was still in there. 

“Rose,” Luisa whispered. 

Confusion was written plainly across Rose’s face. It was obvious that she didn’t understand where she was or what had happened to her. Quickly, those blue eyes took on the wild look of a trapped animal. Rose wasn’t in control of what was happening to her and she was scared. Luisa didn’t know what to do – Rose didn’t do scared. 

She knew that this could be dangerous. For all of them, including Rose.  

Another voice came from the door. The guard from outside the ward had joined his partner. 

“Why is she still here?” he asked, anger lacing his words. “We’re all fucked if she doesn’t get out of here now.” 

Luisa took a step back toward the bed, a hand coming up to reach for Rose. 

“No,” the man said, pushing into the room and grabbing her arm. “Get the fuck out of here.” 

Anger flashed in Rose’s eyes. She moved to sit up, but a guttural moan of pain ripped through her.

“Rose, no!” Luisa said. 

The guard still had hold of Luisa’s arm and yanked her roughly toward the door. At the movement, Rose shifted again, her eyes locked on the man’s hand on Luisa’s skin.

“Rose, don’t move,” Luisa said desperately, fighting against the guard’s grip. 

“Luisa,” she gasped, struggling against the pain, trying to get her body to do what she needed.

The guard was relentless, dragging Luisa out of the room, but as they cleared the door, she heard the other one let out a muffled, “oh fuck.” She followed his frightened gaze.

Rose was half-sitting, staring down at herself as blood spread quickly across the white of her hospital gown. 

Luisa let out a horrified gasp and ripped her hand from the guard’s grasp. “Rose!” 

Rose looked up at her, shocked and confused. 

“Help! We need help down here!” she heard one of the guards shout. The nurses came rushing down the hall and into the room, pushing the three of them out of the way. 

Suddenly, the nicer of the two guards had her by the shoulders and was shaking her. “If you want to be able to see her again, you have to go. Right now.” 

He twisted to look down the hall and Luisa looked past him to see another group of guards making their way toward them. 

She hesitated, unable to shake the feeling that if she left now Rose wouldn’t be there when she came back. 

“She would want you to go,” the guard said, and with a sudden burst of clarity, she realized that he was right. 

She gave one last look to the bed, her heart breaking at Rose’s rapidly paling features, before she turned, head down, and let herself become lost in the fresh chaos of the ward. With her pulse pounding in her ears, she slipped out just behind the newly arrived guards who were attempting to figure out what had happened to their prisoner. 

As she fled the hospital she did her best to keep all thoughts of lasts and endings from her mind. 


End file.
